September 17th & 18th

Welcome

REST Fest is an unconference being developed by Mike Amundsen and Benjamin Young. It will be held at the NEXT Center in Greenville, SC on September 17th & 18th.

Our objective is to give people interested in REST and related topics a chance to get together in an informal setting to share ideas, trade stories, and show examples of current work.

It's a Community Event

REST Fest is a community unconference event focused on the REST architectural style and implementations of the RESTful architectural style. Based on the OpenSpaces model, REST Fest puts developers front-and-center with a handful of selected speakers, "open mic" style Lightning Talks where anyone can present about anything, and round-the-clock access to a "Hack Space" where people can get together and work on whatever interestes them.

It's all about Hands-On

In it's first year, REST Fest will encourage developers who have direct experience building RESTful applications for the World Wide Web to share their successes and their frustrations in an informal atmosphere. Talks that emphasise practical solutions will be favored over theoretical presentations. Showing your code is encouraged! The event is platform and technology agnostic with a leaning toward Open Source and OSS-friendly environments.

Call for Presenters

Presenters are encouraged to submit a title, short abstract (250 or less) and an indication of the "level" of the talk (beginner, intermediate, advanced). "How To..." talks are encouraged as well as "How Do I?" talks. A small number of talks (about five) will be choosen as a "Selected Talk" with a format of 45 minutes plus questions. All talks are automatically accepted for the "Lightning Talk" section (Five Slides in Five Minutes). If you want your talk to be considered only for one category (Lightning or Selected), indicate that on your proposal.

Hacking Is Encouraged

REST Fest will maintain a "Hack Room" where attendees can get together and work on any project they like. The Hack Room will be open throughout the event with power and wireless access provided free of charge. Attendees are also encouraged to propose talks that result in Hack Room participation including frameworks and library authors who are looking for help coding open source libraries.

Workshop: Hypermedia Hacking with Mike Amundsen

There will also be a full-day pre-conference (Sep 17th) workshop hosted by Mike Amundsen. The all-day session includes a mix of presentation, discussion, and hands-on implementation. Attendees will learn how to implement an alternative to one-off Web APIs using Hypermedia Engines and are encouraged to bring laptops and "code-along" with supplied examples throughout the day.